Larry Fink

Larry Fink is the chairman and CEO of BlackRock. Blackrock is "far and away the largest money manager on the planet" with $3.3 trillion in assets and $9 trillion of clients' money for which the firm provides services. According to Vanity Fair, "Fink watches funds equal to a little less than four times the current U.S. budget." At the time of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, Blackrock was the single largest shareholder of BP.

Larry Fink and BlackRock both gained from the 2008 financial crisis and the bailouts that followed. According to Vanity Fair: "Indeed, it is hard to argue that anyone, or any firm on Wall Street, gained as much stature from the economic crisis as did Fink and BlackRock. At the height of the disaster, when the American economy was on the brink, it was to Fink that Wall Street’s C.E.O.’s—including J. P. Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Morgan Stanley’s John Mack, and A.I.G.’s Robert Willumstad—turned for help and counsel. As did the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose top officials turned to Fink for advice on the financial markets and assistance on the $30 billion financing of the sale of Bear Stearns to J. P. Morgan, the $180 billion bailout of A.I.G., the $45 billion rescue of Citigroup, and those of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at $112 billion and growing."

Related SourceWatch articles

 * BlackRock
 * Deepwater Horizon
 * BP

External articles

 * Graydon Carter, "Wild on the Street", Vanity Fair, April 2010.
 * Suzanna Andrews, "Larry Fink’s $12 Trillion Shadow", Vanity Fair, April 2010